Sichere Reise
by lettuceandfriends
Summary: "Safe Journey" GrimmIchi AU Fighting, Hijacking, Dancing, Car Racing, Thieving;
1. When You Were Young

Sichere Reise

Chapter 1: When You Were Young

**The story is going to take a huge turn after this first part, so sit tight and wait for the next chapter. This'll be a long one, and will have a visible plotline soon.**

**Grimmjow and Ichigo's relationship will be a slow gradual thing; come on, you know it tastes sweeter that way!**

-.-

_The first time I ever laid eyes on Grimmjow was a ways back, back when I was young, young enough to not have a solid sense of the world and what I was doing in it. My mother had already died and yes that made me quiet, inverted, and depressed, but I still had those normal childhood experiences. Ones where you learn what bothers you and what doesn't. When you think about questions that have no answers, and constantly ponder them until you're mentally exhausted from trying to comprehend something that doesn't exist. _

_ Grimmjow was a boy without that opportunity. No, that's not right. Grimmjow was someone who was forced into the real world way too soon. He was forced to make those decisions before any normal boy should have even thought about them._

* * *

><p>I was nine, Grimmjow was eight. Isshin, my outrageous father, had taken me to the city to see an old museum, so of course we drove and parked a few blocks from the actual building.<p>

I was bouncing with the excitement, not just from the prospect that soon I'd be peering in glass at real bones and crawling inside re-created historic places, but from the city. My ecstatic mood was induced by so many people milling around, passing in and out of buildings, talking in little alleys, all the cars slowly crawling along with eyes out for pedestrians.

I would stop and run up to every little vendor and make sure I knew exactly what they were selling before I let dad take my hand and pull me towards our destination.

"Ichigo, you little rump, we'll never get there if we keep going like this," Isshin smiled down at me, and ruffled my hair. I grinned at him, and took off before he could grab me. I went running down the next alley, glancing every few seconds behind me. I knew he realized I was only running to get him to chase me.

I could hear his heavy breathing behind me. "ICHI-GOO, COME BACK TO DADDY!" he wailed. I hid behind a trash can. With my head pressed against the wall I was sitting against, my lungs moved in and out as I waited for my dad to come find me. But he never would.

After about 2 minutes I was bored, and I leaned out of my hiding place.

I barely saw Isshin in the dark corner. It was a little after dusk, and the corner had no source of light. He was crouched over something, and I approached him. He heard my footsteps.

"Come here, Ichigo." His entire attitude had changed. He didn't sound worried, just very serious and observative. I reached him, and peered over his shoulder.

The first thing I saw, and the most important to me at the time, was a bright mass of blue hair. It was long enough to be considered a mullet, but it was sloppy and badly cut. Two blue orbs of burning cold fire glared up at me as I stared, and instantly I moved behind dad. I was scared of the ferocity in this boy's glare. From behind dad, I observed him as a whole.

He was tiny, smaller than I was, and wore dark dirty jeans and a long white sleeve t-shirt. The clothes seemed normal to me; I wore outfits similar to them. But they were worn and had tears in them. The boy was in a fetal position, but it was obvious he wasn't hiding. I don't know how I knew it, but the blue haired boy wasn't a coward. Isshin's voice startled me.

"Hey. Where are your parents, kid?" It was obviously the wrong thing to say. At the word "parents" the boy's lip rose up into a curled sneer.

"Get away from me, old man. None of your business."

Isshin at first was startled by the young boy's cheek. But compassion wasn't something my dad lacked. Isshin reached forward and brushed a strand of the boy's hair out of his eyes.

It was my turn to jump when the boy's teeth snapped. Isshin was quick enough to pull back his hand, but the boy was shaking now and his eyes were watering with livid fury.

"I can't leave you here, kid. That's out of the question." Isshin eyed the boy with a certain level of pity.

"I ain't going with you!"

Isshin sighed. Very quickly, without giving him any time to realize what was happening, Isshin scooped up the small boy over his shoulder. Seconds later, my dad was completely bombarded with tiny fisted punches.

"Pervert! Put me down!" the kid flailed, and almost fell, but Isshin hefted him up again, "I'll kill you! I swear to God!"

I followed dad wide-eyed, completely unsure of what he planned to do with this boy. We walked out of the alley and turned in the direction of the parked car, attracting more than a few stares. I watched the strange blue haired boy try to squirm around Isshin's neck in manner that was if anything desperate. But suddenly I heard a sharp call that made me turn my head, and I saw that dad turned around too.

"_That's my son!"_ shouted a red faced man who, I can't really describe him anyway else, looked like a complete bum. He was lopping over to where we were standing on the sidewalk by the gutter.

His hair was greasy and uncombed, and he wore an old wife beater that must have been white at some time. This supposed-father's hair wasn't the bright blue of his son's; the dull brown wasn't even close. For some reason that didn't make me think the boy dyed his own.

"What the hell are you doing?" the man spat in my dad's face. I stood, frozen.

Isshin slowly lowered the struggling boy to the ground. The boy took one look at the man who called himself his dad, and took off in a bolt. Apparently the man was prepared, because he caught the boy by the shoulders before he had time to run four feet. The man growled in the boy's ear. "You fucking stay at home. Run away like that again and you'll regret it."

The boy's eyes were glowing as defiant as ever, but he looked down at the ground; apparently he saw it a good time to stop fighting.

"I'm sorry for the trouble. We saw your son alone and I thought perhaps I could find his parents," Isshin smiled at the man. "I'm glad you're here."

The man glared at dad, and then turned with two hands still on the boy's shoulders. It gave me a sick feeling in my stomach as I watched them walk away.

My dad saw my frown, and put an around my shoulder, and we stood there for a minute. I suppose we both knew it didn't need to be said that we weren't still going to visit the museum. Dad just started walking back towards the car, and I followed him in silence.

In silence at least until the one thing that had been on my mind had to burst out.

"Dad, how come you let him go away with that boy?"

Isshin took in a huge tired breath. "Ichigo, I know right now it's hard to understand, but there's a lot of hurt and pain in the world. No one can fix everything, not even your mom could," Isshin smiled sweetly down at me, "Some people need kindness and respect for their dignity more than anything, and that's all we can give them. That boy might have a poor home and not a loving and caring family, but when he's older he will come to a choice. To let his past overrun his life and to treat others in the same awful way he was treated, or to _forget _and to make amends with his childhood, and do for the people around him what he wished he had as a child. Everyone has a choice Ichigo, and you have to realize that you can only help others to a certain point. They have to be able to make the _choice._"

He looked towards the sky, and I saw him once again like the strong and powerful wise man who was my father.

I looked down at my shoes, and said quietly, "Thanks, dad."

He flashed a grin at me. "Let's go home."

* * *

><p>Today wasn't the first day of school. It was probably the sixteenth day, or something like that. Enough days had passed that all of my friends and I had started to settle into our freshmen year.<p>

"_RENGI! Get your bright red ass over here!" _Ikkaku had casually leaned over my desk, and then bellowed right in my ear over at the pineapple head.

"Ow! Have a little consideration so that others might not go deaf idiot!" I clapped my hands of my ears.

Renji was across the room sweet-talking one of the many brunettes at our school, so when he finally did get himself over to my desk, he had a deep scowl across his face.

"Better be important."

"Of course it is. I have no doubt that you, master of all evil deeds in this world, managed to crash Orihime's pansy party this weekend with a clipped airsoft gun, a wig, and a tux, but did you really afterwards get Uryuu to fall for the cop cover too?"

Renji grinned savagely. "Damn right. Me and Shuhei left Orihime's house and ran into a nice surprise outside. Who would be there but the dick licker himself, lurking below the windows like a fucking squirrel."

Shuhei was listening in now, and added in. "God knows what he was doing."

Renji glanced at his friend. "Probably waiting for a bra to drop out or something. Anyway, we marched over, and when he saw our guns he almost fainted, the little pussy." Shuhei laughed. "I thought he was gonna punch us or something once he realized it was us, but nah he just looked like a deer in headlights," Renji grinned savagely at the part that was next to come, "So all I did was put a hand on his shoulder and said, 'Son, you have two minutes to get clear of this property,' and he ran before I could even finish the sentence!"

Ikkaku cackled.

Alright, so maybe my friends aren't the most mature, but hey, they have their moments. Even though we never say it, we all care for each other a lot.

"The bell's about to ring!" Rukia yelled at us. Everyone around my seat scrambled.

Shunsui was a good teacher. I liked the way he was so relaxed when he taught, and he was really intelligent. I respected him, and I think my classmates did too.

He gave us an American article to analyze, and everyone in the room was working hard. A low buzz of conversation was at a comfortable level, and I could easily concentrate.

"The writing of history is one of the most familiar ways of organizing knowledge. And yet, if familiarity has not always bred contempt, it has at least encouraged a good deal of misunderstanding. All of us meet history at a tender age when tales of the past easily blend with heroic myths of the culture. In Golden Books, Abe Lincoln looms every bit as large as Paul Bunyan, while George Washington's cherry tree gets chopped down yearly with almost as much ritual as St. Nick's Christmas tree goes up. Despite this long familiarity, or perhaps because of it, most students absorb the required facts about the past without any real conception of-"

I stopped reading. The polite buzz of conversation in the classroom had suddenly gone tense. I could almost taste it in the air. I looked up, and saw a teenage boy with the bluest fucking hair I'd ever seen.

This is why I mentioned it not being the first day. This kid had a bad ass air about him, and we all knew he probably had only came because of the cops. He was a skipper.

Anyway, his hair was blue, but that wasn't his only noticeable feature. He had a tall, full body, and I'll admit, he was hot. But while it should have drawn everyone to him, there was something else about the way he carried himself that repelled everyone.

His eyes were blue orbs that pierced everything he looked towards.

"I'm Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez. I ain't writing it on the board." It's not like his low gruff voice sounded anything like that little boy's, but all of a sudden, I remembered that day. When I was nine years old.

The memory of the smell of that alley hit me like a truck.

The seat in front of me was empty, and I watched in awe as this living piece of my past made his sleek way over to the desk. I suppose I shouldn't have been so obvious as I stared, but hell, his hair was _sky blue. _

Grimmjow turned around to look at me as he sat down, and said in a clear loud voice, "What the fuck are you staring at?"

He hadn't changed one bit.

-.-

**'When You Were Young' by The Killers**

**~More about the title if anything, but listen to it. **

**Review! Even if it's just a few lovely words or a few nasty ones, they'd be very cherished.**


	2. Nugget

Sichere Reise

Chapter 2: Nugget

-.-

I took karate class, just like everyone else, but nothing had ever happened to me. At least not like this. This was something else. I was surrounded by seven men, the number only proclaimed more the irony of this situation. And I was scared.

"Fuck off!" my eyebrows must have betrayed my fear, and my voice shook; I knew I sounded pathetically desperate, "I didn't do anything to you!" Most of them laughed, and started circling a little closer. But one man on the right side of their group had a completely straight face.

"I know. There's nothing else I'd know better, and that's exactly why you deserve it." He had straight black hair, and it flipped against his eyes as he dipped his head and spit on the ground. He turned to the other men. "He shouldn't be here, but now that he is, what's the point in wasting the opportunity?" The asshole cocked his head at me, and I knew I was wrong thinking he lacked a sense of humor. No, he was in fact probably the one smiling the biggest, a morbid open crescent of teeth spreading across his mouth as he imagined about what I could only think to be a bloody, limping, and bruised orange-haired boy.

My line of sight was suddenly jerked to the right, and seconds later I felt a mind-numbing throb directly below my jaw bone. As soon as I could see straight, I whipped around and saw a blond haired man swing his fist around for a second hit. My fingers clenched tight into a fist on my thigh.

Because now I knew what was happening to me. I might have cried from tears of laughter at how stupid this was, or scream until my throat was raw because of how much pain I felt, but I didn't. Now, as I stared down at the cracked asphalt street, I knew I was the only answer to this question; I was the only variable to control, to get myself out of this.

I lifted my crunched fist, pulling it back to swing, but suddenly I was pummeled into by another man who flew from my other side. My feet staggered to the left, and I wiped dripping blood off from my bottom lip.

This time I wouldn't hand out tickets to my opera of death like a lemonade stand drink. I was solid metal now, not a boy, and I wouldn't tolerate this shit, simple.

More came at me, and their fucking faces were disgusting. The happiness, the joy. Sick bastards like these assholes I knew I could hit without feeling regret. I ripped my hands into the closest one's jaw bone, and felt that supposedly satisfying crack letting me know I'd hit the right spot.

I kicked, I lashed, I punched, and I clawed, until I was beaten thoroughly. My eyes were sore and my face was bruised, my arm muscles were limp, and blood streamed from my mouth and nose. I sagged, and barely moved to block the smiling man's last kick in my side.

You always wonder when someone will break. In a horror movie when you're watching with shivers running down your spine, when you're praying to god that the character will figure out what they're doing, you sit in vigilance for the moment of terror when their eyes widen and they turn to run screaming. In a drama when you're so sad because of the horrid shit the character had to tough out in their life, when you feel sick because you know something's coming, something that will make them bend in ways the fiber of a being was not meant to bend, you hope to god they don't snap. But most often, you feel like this during an action movie. The character receives hit after hit after hit after hit, and it makes you say to yourself, "Fuck, shouldn't they be dead?"

I didn't feel like I was dead, I felt like I was run over by a truck and then crushed by tiny sharp clenching nails that reached places inside me that I had no idea were sensory. But not dead.

And for the first time since the fight had started, when the dark haired one brought the length of his hand down right above my kneecap, I screamed. Tears were streaming down my face. Lord, but it could have been blood; my face was practically numb with pain. I didn't know anything anymore.

It must have been obvious to them that I had given up, because one of them ran straight at me and knocked me over with a sloppy kick to my chest.

I lay there curled up, with only the whimpering dignity of a beaten child. By the sore, tickling feeling of my eye muscles losing their grip I knew that they were starting to gloss up and roll back. My lips were cracked and bloody and drying quickly; my hands shook, and my thighs throbbed with every stressed beat of my heart.

I closed my eyes, and saw through the lids.

A flash.

So red.

Pain. Someone had kicked my side.

Light.

I must have finally gone delusional…

Because then I saw…

Blue.

Pure Blue.

"What the _hell_ is this?" Someone had apparently seen me.

"Ah, look who deci—" _Crack_. I heard the now-familiar sound of knuckles coming in contact with flesh.

"The hell—is this." The new voice kicked another of the men —in the balls, from what it sounded like— and then stepped over a body, walking closer to me. "Do you know who this is? _Do you know who this is!_"

Someone sneered, and said something degrading about me being an intruder, and maybe "suburban ass" got in there too, but I wasn't paying any attention: the voice that now was directly above me was absolutely livid.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP." The sound of air glided above me as I heard another crack and a man groan. "An innocent kid. That's who the fuck it is!" The guy was crazed. Every time I heard a punch or a kick, he would cackle, and greedily bark out threats.

Despite all the pain I was in, this murderous creature, one that was only painted in my mind by his thick voice and maniacal roaring, took over my mind. He was insanely blissful in the mayhem that he no doubt was ensuing, darkly ravenous in the sounds he made as he fought.

I heard him stop attacking for a moment, and pant for breath. He sounded completely exhilarated. "Look at what you've done. What if he's dead?" he yelled.

_What_? Did I really look that bad? Did I really feel that bad? "Yes," I whispered under my breath, and it came out with a rush of hot air, and was unnaturally high.

The rest of the gang members must have gotten away because I heard the heavy breathing drop down right near my face. Strong fingers grasped my chin, and pulled until I was facing upward.

His thumb firmly peeled back an eyelid, and I gasped from pain. This throaty action must have been too sudden, and I started choking on saliva in my swollen throat. No sooner had the choking started that those very same hands were lifting up my shoulders in a firm grasp until I was sitting up.

His gruff voice broke the silence that we both sat in as I recovered.

"I ain't gonna carry you to the god'amn hospital." His voice was muted, and his enunciation warbled; I heard the soft click of a lighter, and turned to see that the blue haired bastard had sat down and was now smoking a fag.

Because it was, indeed, that blue haired bastard. Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez.

"What'r you doing here?" I blurted out in a painful rush, and regretted it immediately. Because I knew the answer was stale, hanging in the air around us over the knocked out bodies, just like the smoke that sifted out of his nostrils: saving _me_.

He let out another puff of smoke. "For someone who just got their ass whipped, you're pretty cocky," he shifted his neck to eye me with a look of aloof disdain, and once again I felt a wave of anger rush through me in the presence of this guy. Who was he calling cocky? Everything about _him_ screamed arrogantly for attention: his jock swagger, his ratty clothes, the way he smoked that cigarette. Hell, but the worst part was his hair. He styled it in this boisterous way, all of it gelled upwards and spiked on the fringed edges. It made you seriously begin to wonder how big this guy thought his own dick was. I told him so.

He cackled. "That's rich. Honestly, I couldn't give a fuck how tiny you think my dick is, and I definitely don't care-" but he was cut off by the sound of sirens. "Oh," he started again, "that'd be the ambulances." When did he call for an ambulance? Christ I was out of it.

"You, I-" but I stopped short. He had leaned over me and was now in a crouched position, his body relaxed and loose as if he was ready to spring away. My shoulder twitched suddenly from a spark of pain. He was staring at me with such ferocity that the glowing of those blue orbs almost consumed me. But it was in those eyes where I saw what startled me the most: genuine concern.

He spoke quickly in a low voice.

"I know you didn't do anything to these assholes, and I realize that you probably just wanted to take a different route home, and weren't looking for trouble, but, Kurosaki, stay away from now on," quickly as it had come, the intensity slipped away, and Grimmjow's cruel smirk was back, "I'm working on some shit here and I don't need some unnaturally colored strawberry to keep having to take care of. Don't come back." He picked himself off the ground and turned and ran.

I didn't strain myself to watch him leave, I just closed my eyes. I could barely hear his light steps on the asphalt through the throbbing heart pounds in my ears and the sirens.

* * *

><p>Don't ever let anyone tell you that the ambulance is a scary place, stressful and scarring or anything. When I woke up in the hospital bed, the memories of the trip over were pretty peaceful. They had put an IV in my arm, and I remember that instantly drugged-up loopy feeling. Most of the pain after that was nonexistent. The people there were very calm, and spoke reassuring words.<p>

I woke up feeling pretty clean and patched up, although that might just have been because as soon as I woke up my dad (who was, of course, right there, creepy as usual) started scolding me in his own way by rattling off everything that was wrong with me, and the lengths gone to fix them.

I stared at the potted plant on a table across the room as I told him what happened; I could tell he didn't believe everything I said, still thinking I provoked the fight a little more than I told in the story, but we came to a good standpoint, I think.

In other words, he stormed out of my room too frustrated to speak.

The rest of the next two weeks went way too slow, but at the same time, way too fast. I spent the hours dozing off into the whimsical world of rem between two kinds of consciousness. Things happened, things didn't happen, people said things and I couldn't be quite sure whose voice it was, and I remained in bed for the majority of all events. By the time the doctor said I would soon be well enough to leave and stay at my own place, I was disoriented enough to be confused.

All sidetracking aside, one thing, or person, rather, stayed constant. Grimmjow flooded my mind in the darkest of hours. American Grimmjow, Captain Grimmjow, Female Grimmjow, Titan Grimmjow, Doctor Grimmjow, blue this, blue that, it was past the point of obsession.

Except, I wasn't really bothered by it. For two reasons, actually, both coinciding in a truthful paradox: That I was too bedridden to actually let my controlled pride had an opinion on anything, and that I was sure it was normal to go delusional in such a way after being beaten up so sumptuously that you were drugged into oblivion.

Or rather, into a vegetable.

This is important, despite the fact that Grimmjow was all I saw in my bedraggled dreams and therefore the only thing of interest at the hospital, because of a conversation I overheard the night I returned to home sweet home.

* * *

><p>"Karin! Get the door!" I yelled at my sister. She gave me a look that I knew in a few years time would make friends with a certain middle finger to complete the show, and I grinned back at her over the couch's arm. I turned around, grabbed my can of Root beer, and took a swig. Only to have it sprayed out of my mouth in a blindingly outraged burst, after hearing the words, "Ah my sweet Karin! You look the spit image of your gorgeous brother!" come from underneath that gaudy hat of the person standing in our doorway.<p>

"Kisuke. Great to know you're still in town." Karin might have muttered some deathly things about gorgeous boys under her breath after that, but I couldn't have been sure.

"Now, is that anyway to speak to your guest? Besides, you know I would have come to visit if it weren't for my shop. I've been busy!"

"Feel free to stay home next time." Karin didn't even bother waiting by the door for him to move so she could close it, and walked out of the room toward the kitchen.

During their pleasant exchange I had flipped around backwards on the couch, because the back of it faced the entrance of our house. My forearms layer on the top of the couch as I complained to Urahara. "Why the hell are you here? And get your eyes checked, I don't look like a girl."

"What?" he adjusted his green and white stripped hat as he shrugged innocently, ignoring my crude acknowledgment of his lame ass compliment, "Is it so unbelievable that I might stop by to visit you and see how you're doing after your exciting and traumatizing experience at the hospital?"

"Yes."

He sighed. "I can never win the hearts of you children. Here, I brought a bag of goods for the girls." If he didn't normally do this, I would have suspected some kind of drugs or fishy substances in his little "care packages", but since the ones in the past were just candy from the shop, I spoke from experience as I told him thanks, and caught the bag he tossed. Yuzu loved Kisuke, and Karin just wouldn't admit it.

His traditional clogs clapped on our hardwood floor as he walked out of the room. "Isshin's in the study downstairs," I yelled after him. He waved in response without even turning around. I shook my head, pressed the remote play button and started the American movie I was watching again.

It wasn't until later that night as I passed the basement door on my way up to bed when I eavesdropped. Truthfully, the words that caught my ears and made me listen was "found him pin prick high", but just a few moments later I heard Grimmjow's name, which I thought was a good enough excuse for me to listen in.

Mind you, I had obviously stopped having delusions about him like I did when I was on pain killers, but hey, the guy was still on my thoughts every once in a while. When you pull it down to black and white, he probably saved my life.

"-which probably explains why Kenpachi chose to take him in anyway. The kid's a train wreck. But what can I say, I used to be just like that," I heard the familiar sound of Kisuke scratching his stubble, like he always did when he was considering something, "In fact, I'm surprised Kenpachi hadn't known something like this was going to happen."

"How could he have? Considering how much time they've had together, there wasn't even close to enough sufficient time for the guy to start getting into this kid's life."

"Regrettably."

"How does he know that Jaegerjaquez has left for good?"

I flinched. He ran away? Or maybe this was dad's kind way of putting that he'd died? No. I didn't want to believe that. Grimmjow wasn't my favorite person around, but anybody dying isn't something you want to hear. Besides, I almost snorted, they'd know for sure if they were going to call it 'death'

"Took a lot of his stuff, I assume, because whatever of his he didn't take, he burned. Which is actually what woke Kenpachi up in the first place." Kisuke chuckled. "Kid left the flu in the fireplace open. He must have been nervous. He stole the Giant's beater car, too. Left the license plate, so I bet he either won't use it for long or has got an illegal plate for himself."

Ishiin grunted. "I wish Kenpachi would report it or go looking for him, or really just _something_. Never tell Ichigo I said his, but I regret leaving Grimmjow with his birth dad." It seemed that Grimmjow had been the topic of all their conversation tonight; I couldn't remember Kisuke hearing the story about the night a long time ago when we found Grimmjow. "That boy was always in a very small back of my mind. I've regretted it ever since I heard how he is now.

"Don't let it worry you too much. The man knows what he's doing. He trusts the kid, despite what you'd expect. I think he believes that there's a good reason Grimmjow ran away."

I moved my head away from the crack in the doorway.

Grimmjow was gone.

As I thought those words to myself, a cool chill went through my body. It wasn't pleasant.

From what I knew about Grimmjow, little that may be, he was the last person who would just "run away" for any of classic reasons. He was too bold, too confident, too old to go seeking attention or feel like he "didn't belong" or any of those shit reasons people run away.

No, his adoptive dad (another thing I learned about him from that conversation) was right. Grimmjow left because of something important.

What had he said?

"_I'm working on some shit here and I don't need some unnaturally colored strawberry to keep having to take care of."_

He was working on something.

My eyes widened. It had to be some gang business! I hadn't thought much of it at the time, but those gang members knew Grimmjow. He was mixed up into shit, I just knew it.

Which probably meant he was in a lot of trouble.

I sucked in a tight breath. I'd pay back this debt.

I had to go after him.

-.-

**'Nugget' by Cake**

**I know it's not the _completely _the mood of the story at that time, but really, it's definitely part of Grimmjow's act. Most definitely.**

**Listen to it, and then review Ichigo's suburban ass ^^**


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